New Lawn Mower

Today, I was about to mow the yard with our used 20 year old self-propelled Honda lawn mower that we got for $100 from a place that sells used lawn mowers. I got it out, and loaded it up with more gasoline, and tried to start it, but it wouldn't start. My dad came over to help me, but he couldn't get it started. So we hooked the spark plug up to it on the outside of it, to see if we could get a spark-didn't happen on two spark plugs that we tried. Daddy then went over to a used lawn mower place to see how much a new coil would cost. He found out that it would cost $126.00! I then called another used lawn mower store, and they gave me an estimate that it would cost about $89.99! Daddy and I then decided that we needed to get a new lawn mower. We first stopped at Costco, which had an MTD Pro which had a Honda engine, and was self-propelled, but it would've cost us with tax over $400.00! We then proceeded to Lowes where we found a Troy-Bilt that was self-propelled and had a Honda engine, but it was about the same price MTD Pro, just about $10 cheaper. Daddy and I then went to Home Depot, where we found a Cub Cadet that was self-propelled and had a Honda engine, and it was only $259.99 plus a 3 year warranty. We went ahead and purchased it, took it home to use on our front yard, and it work fine. My dad then humored himself by going over to our old Honda and just trying to see if it would start after we had bought our Cub Cadet. He pulled the pulley, and it started! I guess that sometimes in life things need to have a little rest before going back to them and trying them again.

P.S.-We will still probably be keeping the Cub Cadet.

New Orchestra

This past week, I tried out for the Symphony Orchestra at my school. This group is the highest group in the orchestra program, and has received UIL Sweepstakes for thirty consecutive years. This was my third time to tryout, because I did it at the end of last year, and I did the tapes that the syphony kids did to try to get in at the semester. This time, I tried out, and our head director told me to pick two scales from the three that I was practicing on. So, I chose the "G" and "C" three octave scales, which go high up the violin. I messed up a little on the "G", and re-started it, but still messed up a little bit. I played the "C" scale fine, and she told me the excerpts to play, so I played them for her. The excerpts were from "Danse Bacchanale" by Saint-Saens, and a symphony by Borodin. I then did the sightreading, which was fairly easy. On top of this, she was recording me on my excerpts. She then told me after my audition that if I had remembered what she had told me from last year, which was when she thought that I wasn't quite ready for symphony. She then picked up a piece of paper that she was writing comments on, and at the bottom, it said-"Recommended Orchestra: Symphony", I was so excited that I had made it! She then proceeded to tell me that I had done an excellent job. I asked her if I could give her a hug, and she let me. I am so excited about being in symphony next year!

Internet Phone

Recently, our family switched from AT&T home phone service to the T-Mobile Internet Phone service. We are enjoying it very much. For $10 a month, we get phone service and caller I.D., which we never had before (and love). We are saving quite a bit.

Last Weekend

Last weekend, my dad and I had the privilege to go camping on a father/son campout with church at Cleburne State Park. We were there Friday night through Saturday. Our church combined with the Boy Scout Troup that meets at our church. The first night, we arrived, set up our Taj Mahal of a tent (4 room tent), and my dad got the camp stove going to boil up some water for coffee. While we were setting up our tent, one of our youth group members got his pellet gun to go shoot a water snake. He shot the snake, and one of our youth group sponsors skinned it with his pocket knife. Then, some of the youth group members cleaned it. Of course, some of the nerves were going nuts in the snake, and it was moving around. Then, one of the youth group members put it over the campfire (we didn't eat it though!). Later that evening, my mom had purchased a birthday cake, because daddy's 59th birthday was April the 25th. We surprised him with a cake, and we then had a flag retirement ceremony that the scouts put on. The retirement was very interesting. That morning, I went and played ultimate frisbee in a field with the youth group, while daddy played forty-two. We later left, after hot dogs, and got some beautiful pictures of the Texas wildflowers. There were some beautiful pink buttercups on the side of Highway 67, we also got some pictures of the bluebonnets while we were still at the park.
That evening, we met with our friends and tried our new Cheesecake Factory restaurant. The food was great, but we didn't have any cheesecake, because they fed us sooooo much of our main course. We had a fun weekend.